1 Kings 5:1

NEGOTIATIONS WITH HIRAM, 1 Kings 5:1-12.

1. Hiram king of Tyre Whether this Hiram was the same king of Tyre who supplied David with cedars and carpenters to build his royal palace, (see 2 Samuel 5:11,) some have presumed to doubt. But the positive statement of this verse, that Hiram was ever a lover of David, and the words of Solomon’s message, (2 Chronicles 2:3,) “As thou didst deal with David my father, and didst send him cedars to build him a house,” seem clearly to put it beyond all question that the same Hiram who furnished David materials for his palace assisted Solomon in the building of the temple. No one would ever have thought otherwise had not Menander of Ephesus, according to Josephus, ( Jos. against Apion, 1, 18,) affirmed that Hiram reigned thirty-four years; and this seems not long enough to meet the demands of the scriptural narrative. According to 1 Kings 9:10, he was still living in the twentieth year of Solomon’s reign, and this would leave only fourteen years in which to have had his intercourse with David. Accordingly David, who reigned in all but forty years, and seven of these at Hebron, must have reigned nineteen years at Jerusalem before he began to build his royal palace there, a supposition altogether improbable. In view, therefore, of the consistency and positive statements of the scriptural narrative, we conclude that Menander’s chronology is wrong, and that Hiram’s reign must have extended over a large portion of that of both David and Solomon.

His servants Ambassadors.